


Dag & Max

by Iben



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 07:46:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7213822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iben/pseuds/Iben
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is hard in the North, on the outskirts of civilization, but it's the only life Dag has ever known. She marries Max, a man she barely knows, but it turns out marriage is just the first of many changes to come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dag had done it before, once. It was with a boy who came to town with a traveling theater group. He had fair hair and dimples and Dag thought he looked like an angel. He wasn't in the play, he had told her he just helped with the stage and things, but she still would have loved to go. Dad said no, though, said he had too many daughters and not enough money to waste it on follies like theater. So Dag didn't get to see the theater group perform, but she did lift her skirt up for that pretty boy, before they moved on.

She had done it before, so it wasn't a shock when Max rolled on top of her, under the bear rug where it was warm. She was wearing a nightgown and he fumbled a bit getting the garment out of the way. The fire crackled and made shadows dance across the walls. 

She spread her legs a little to accommodate him. She knew what to expect, or thought she did, so she was surprised when he put his hand down there. That had to be his hand, a finger slipping inside. She had been looking at the shadows, but now she turned her gaze to him. 

Max didn't look like an angel. He had a beard and uncombed hair, older than she was by some ten years. He was looking at her and his eyes were both dark and shiny in the faint, orange light from the fireplace. She almost asked him what he was doing, she had thought he was going to put it in, when he removed his hand and instead she felt the blunt pressure of something bigger. 

He turned his gaze away and they were under the bear rug, but despite that she felt exposed, her private parts being touched like this. He pushed his thing at her, until it sort of popped in and then it just slid inside. It had hurt a little that other time, with the boy from the theater group, but it didn't now. The sensation was just strange. 

He moved his hips back and forth and she could hear him breath a little faster and heavier. He seemed big on top of her, and he smelled unfamiliar. After a while, she wasn't sure exactly how long, he grunted and became still. Then he rolled off her. He turned onto his side, his back to her. After a moment she rolled over onto her side too, her back to him. It felt sticky and wet between her legs. 

She pulled the rug up to her chin to keep the warmth from escaping. The cabin wasn't very big, just one room. From where she lay she could see the table and the chairs, the stove and the stack of wood by the door. If they were to have children they'd all have to sleep in the same bed. That was alright, she had shared a bed with her sisters her entire life. They'd all been in the same one when they were small, lined up in a row like little plants in a field. Then when they got older, and bigger, she had shared with Toast. 

Now she shared with Max. She could feel his body heat against her back and for a moment she felt sad. If she had been at home, in her own bed, she would have scooted back, until her back was touching Toast's. If she was cold, or sad, or felt lonely, she did that. She didn't dare do that with Max. 

She wondered if they would have any children. People said it was hard out here, it didn't take so easily. In her mind it looked like when you planted a seed in rich dark earth, and she pictured a seedling starting to grow inside a woman's belly, sprouting a flower that little by little took on the form of a baby. But the winters were long and harsh, and maybe it was like that inside her, a frozen field. You never knew. 

She woke up when he climbed over her to get out of bed. She opened her eyes in time to see his back as he headed out the door. She got up then too. The room was chilly; the fire had gone out during the night. She had to pee and she stuck her feet into her boots and wrapped her coat around her before she went outside. 

The outside air was icy against her shins. She guessed Max was in the outhouse, so she trotted over to the edge of the forest, hitched up her gown and squatted. It burned a little when she peed. Her butt got cold in seconds, but she was soon done. Angharad knew a joke about someone whose butt froze and fell off, but Dag couldn't remember it just now. 

Max came out of the outhouse and turned his head when he saw her coming back towards the cabin. He had put on his pants over his underpants, and his coat over the shirt he had slept in. Seeing him in the pale morning light coming from the east, where the sun reluctantly struggled to rise above the horizon, last night felt almost unreal. All of it felt unreal, the wedding ceremony, the wedding night, even putting her clothes and the few items she owned in the chest he had cleared out for her. 

They went inside and he walked over to the fireplace and crouched in front of it to get the fire going. 

“Should I light the wood stove?” Dag asked. 

He nodded. 

It was so quiet. He went out and fetched some water. They made breakfast and then ate it by the table. Dag kept her coat on, but the fires were crackling and the cabin would soon warm up. The crackle was the only sound. She wasn't used to silence like this. She wasn't used to any kind of silence. 

When they were finished eating Max took the rest of the water that had been heated on the stove and poured it in a washbowl that was on a table in the corner. A sheet had been put up to shield it somewhat from the rest of the room. Dag didn't know if he'd done that for her benefit or if it had been there before as well. Now he showed her where the washcloths were, in the cupboard next to the bedlinen, and gestured towards the corner. 

“You go first,” he said. 

His voice was gruff. She wondered if that was because he spoke so little. On the occasions that she'd seen him, when he'd come to the house, she had only heard him say a few words. 

She went first behind the sheet. If he had wanted to he could have seen her, though, the sheet didn't completely obscure the view. But he didn't. She looked and she saw that he had his back turned. 

She washed off, using the washcloth and the piece of yellowish soap that was next to the bowl. Then she got dressed. She thought about home and her sisters, about Capable lacing the pretty dress she'd worn yesterday. She had changed out of it before coming here, leaving it at home so the next one to get married could wear it. 

Max had cleared away the dishes from the table when she was done. 

“It's all yours,” she said. 

She didn't keep her back turned. She stole a peek and saw him without his shirt, his broad back. A large scar ran across his shoulder-blade. He'd been in the war. One of them, or the single big one, depending on how you defined it. Different clans fighting each other for land, resources, power. It was still going on, just not here. Up here there was not much to fight about, just snow and unyielding earth. 

Max didn't say anything as they looked after the animals. Then he went to set some traps while Dag made dinner. When it got dark he came back and they ate. He still didn't say anything. 

After a little more than a week she walked back home. On foot it took a while, but it wasn't too far. Her boots sunk deep into the snow in some places, but water rippled in the creeks underneath the ice. Spring would come, eventually. 

When the trees cleared she could see the house. It was a bit bigger than Max's cabin. Angharad was in the kitchen when Dag came inside. She looked up from a dough she was kneading, a surprised look on her face.

Dad came in through the back door just then; he stopped when he spotted Dag.

“What are you doing here?” he said. 

“I don't want to live there anymore.”

Dad made an impatient sound and a dismissive face. He walked over to a chair and sat down.

“You're married,” he said. “You're his responsibility now.”

“He's really boring.”

Dad pulled off his boots. 

“I have enough mouths to feed,” he said. 

He turned his head and looked at Dag, an annoyed look on his face. 

“Go on back there now,” he said. He got up and walked on his stockinged feet into the other room. 

Dag sat down at the table.

“Is he mean?” Angharad asked.

“No.”

“Is he... rough with you?”

Dag shook her head. Max had gone on top of her one more time, but it didn't hurt. 

Angharad's little boy was sleeping in his cot, which she had placed in front of the fire where it was warm, but he woke with a whimper and she picked him up. 

She wasn't married when she had him, that's why she was still living here. It was a disgrace, but the father was a hunter who had just been passing through these parts and he was long gone by the time her belly started to swell. There was nothing to do about it. And Dad grumbled even more about having too many mouths to feed. It wasn't just idle talk, though. Dag had gone hungry when they didn't have enough food to fill them. 

It was Dad who had asked Max, once when he came by the house to drop off a couple of rabbits, if he wanted to marry one of his daughters. Dag had been in the other room, eavesdropping with her sisters. 

Max hadn't replied and Dad said he could have any one of them, but Angharad came with a baby. Did he want to have a look at them? Max had made a kind of hesitant noise. He didn't give an answer that time, but Dad waited a little while, then asked him again. He asked him a few times, actually. In the end he said yes, although Dag wasn't there to hear it that time, but he didn't pick either one of them. It was Dad who decided it would be Dag. 

“Why me?” she had asked. 

“Because I like the man, and you're least likely to give him any trouble,” Dad had replied. 

Perhaps that was true. Angharad came with another man's baby. Toast had said, loud and clear when Dad heard her, that she would never agree to marry anyone she didn't want to marry. Capable was sweet on another boy, and she wanted to marry him, but he couldn't support her yet. Cheedo was the youngest, and scared at the prospect of having to leave home and marry anyone. 

Even though Dag had asked why it had to be her, she didn't really object. She had to marry someone sooner or later, Max didn't live that far away and he wasn't old or disfigured in any way. When he had more than he could eat, usually when he'd been hunting, he shared it with them. That was an act of kindness and kindness was a good thing. It was all so hypothetical anyway, until it wasn't any more. 

“Are you still here?” Dad said when he came back to the kitchen a little later. 

Capable had come back from the barn and she had braided Dag's hair. Dad went over to the tea pot and looked inside. It appeared to be empty, because he put it back.

“I can make some more,” Capable said. 

“I need to go out again,” Dad said. “Send her back instead.”

He pointed at Dag. 

Max showed up on horseback in the afternoon. Dag saw him through the window when he dismounted in the yard out front. She had to go back, she knew that. She wondered if he was angry. 

There was a single knock on the door before it opened. Dag had heard that down south they didn't have doors on their houses, because it was so warm all the time that they wanted the wind to run freely through their rooms. She wondered if that was true.

Capable smiled when Max came in through the door. “Hello,” she said. “Do you want a cup of tea?”

He shook his head, then looked at Dag. She got up from the table. 

“I'll see you soon,” Capable said and gave her a hug. 

“Watch out for tree-goblins and snakes with legs,” Dag said and Capable laughed. 

Dag followed Max outside to the horse. He sat up, then held his hands out to her, reaching with one arm behind his back, so that he could pull her up behind him. She had to hold on to him, so she wouldn't fall off, and she gripped his thick, sheepskin coat. 

She had asked him what the horses' names were, and he had said they were called One and Two. This was Two they were going on. The tree trunks in the forest were black as coal. Dag gazed into the deepness of the forest, thinking about all the stories she and her sisters had told each other. She had told a good portion of them herself. 

She got started on making dinner when they got back to the cabin. She looked at Max. He had skinned a rabbit, it was on the table. He didn't seem angry, but it was hard to tell. 

“I know how to skin rabbits,” she said. 

He met her gaze, then nodded a little. 

After they had eaten and washed up there was nothing to do. It was dark outside and they looked in on the animals once before the night. Then it was quiet. 

“Do you know any stories?” Dag asked. 

Max looked at her a moment, then shook his head. 

“Do you want me to tell a story?” she said. She didn't want it to be so quiet, it felt as if it went inside her and banged and clanged against the inside of her head. 

He nodded. Then cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said. 

She told him a story. It was a good one. She could see that he was listening, even though he wasn't looking at her. 

He didn't say anything when she had finished.

“Did you like it?” she asked.

“It was very strange,” he said after a moment. 

“No, it's very good.”

He nodded.

“It was good,” he said. 

They went to bed after that.


	2. Chapter 2

Max came and fetched her the second, and the third, and the fourth time she walked home, but he didn't say anything about it. The fifth time, though, he didn't come. Dad was unhappy with her behavior, but she didn't care. She curled up next to Toast in the bed that evening, and listened to the hushed voices in the darkness. They didn't have a bear rug, like Max did, just a blanket, so it wasn't as warm, but it was familiar and home and all good things. 

At breakfast the next morning Dad grabbed Dag's wrist when she reached for a piece of bread.

“No,” he said. “You go on home to your husband. He'll feed you.”

His grip on her arm wasn't hard, but it was firm. Dag looked at him.

“No, he doesn't,” she said.

Dad sighed. “Yes, he does,” he said. “You have to stop doing this. You can come and visit, and we'll be happy to see you then. But you're married now, you have responsibilities. Go on now, I don't want to see you again for a while.”

Dag looked around the table. Her sisters were all looking at her. 

“We miss you too,” Angharad said. 

Dag trudged back through the woods, towards the cabin. She saw a squirrel climbing up a tree, it froze halfway up the trunk and stared at her, before it scurried away.

Max was outside, chopping wood. His breath fogged in the cold air. He paused when Dag came walking up to him. She put her hands deep into her coat pockets.

“Why didn't you come get me?” she asked.

“I was busy.”

He put another log on the block. Everyone looked somewhat angry when they chopped wood, so she couldn't really tell. Still, a vague feeling of shame crept over her. Maybe he was disappointed in her. 

“The horses need feeding,” he said after a couple of more logs. 

“Okay.”

She went to feed the horses and then she fed herself. She was hungry and took cheese and bread and some dried apple from the pantry, ate it standing up.

The evenings were as quiet as before, except when Dag asked him if he wanted her to tell another story, and he said yes. He'd given her things to mend. A few items of clothing, a pillowcase and a towel. Some of them had been mended before, the stitches a little uneven and clumsy. She assumed he had done it himself. Her stitches were small and fine. 

She missed her family, but she didn't go back. Dad would get angry with her if she did, and maybe Max would too. She lived here now, and she spent her days working around the house. At night she slept next to him, but he hadn't been on her again, not since the last time she went home.

They were in bed and she tapped his shoulder so that he turned his head. 

“Aren't you going to do it again?” she asked. 

He looked at her. He had green eyes and really long eyelashes. 

“I thought maybe you didn't like it,” he said. “Maybe that's why you kept running off.”

“No. I just miss my sisters.” 

She wanted him to do it. That's how you made babies, and she wanted a baby. Also, and she hadn't thought about that until he stopped doing it, it felt sort of nice. 

He moved then and she scooted a little closer to the middle of the bed. He put his hand between her legs first, while he held himself up on his other arm. Then he pushed inside her, but paused when his hips were flush against her and took her arm and put it around himself, then he nudged her other arm. His back was warm through the shirt, beneath her palms. He felt big to hold. 

It felt good the way he was sliding in and out. She couldn't really explain it. It made her feel warm down there. His breathing was heavy, close to her ear. She closed her eyes, felt him move inside her. Then after a while he made that soft, grunting noise. She knew that was when he spilled in her and she wondered what that felt like, to make him sound like that, almost like it hurt. 

He moved to get off her.

“Can I see it?” she said.

He froze and looked at her. 

She had never seen a grown man's thing, just little boys', like Angharad's baby. She really wanted to know what it looked like. With Max they had been under the rug, and with the theater boy she didn't think to look. She had been on her back in the hay, and he was already on top of her when he pulled his pants down and stuck it in. 

“Please?” she said. 

Max lifted himself a little, and the bear rug with him, to let her see him. She looked down. It was much bigger than a small boy's, and it didn't look soft. She knew it was hard when it went inside her, because she could feel it. Hair grew in a bush around it, just like women had hair between their legs, but he had a lot more, and the pouch below it looked heavy with its two orbs. 

He lay down next to her and pulled up his underpants again under the rug. Dag pulled down her nightgown. She pressed her thighs together, feeling the stickiness there, and the heat in her legs.

**

Max had some errands in town and Dag accompanied him. She went on One and he on Two. Town mostly consisted of one street, lined by houses and there were a couple of other buildings behind them, a couple of stables and outhouses. 

Max had some hides to sell and he did that first. Dag was waiting for him to finish haggling when she spotted Marie a little further up the street.

“I'm gonna go talk to a friend,” she said. Max nodded without looking at her.

She walked over to where Marie was sitting on a railing meant to tie horses to. 

“Hi,” she said and jumped up to sit next to her. 

Marie smiled. “Hi!”

“What are you doing?”

“Just waiting. My Dad is getting his horse re-shoed and Mom is buying sewing things. You?”

“The same. Waiting.”

“How's married life?”

“It's fine.”

Dag looked over to where Max stood. He looked very male, somehow, when she saw him from a distance like this. 

“I'm probably getting married soon too,” Marie said.

“Yeah, to who?”

“There are some new people in town. My Dad has invited one of them for dinner.”

That wasn't fair. Marie's parents only had one child. Dag's dad had several, and one grandchild. 

“Are they young?” Dag asked. 

“Between twenty and thirty, maybe? I don't know exactly.”

Max was thirty. That was young enough to not be deterring. There were other unmarried men around here, Dag could think of a few, but they were old. She was glad she hadn't ended up with one of them, and she didn't want her sisters to either. 

“Where do they live?” she asked.

“I'm not sure.”

She should tell Dad about it, if he didn't already know. 

“According to my mom they are good looking too,” Marie said. “And they aren't trappers.”

She laughed a little, as if that was a good joke. Dag got a funny feeling inside. It took her a moment before she grasped that Marie was being condescending; she had never been that before. 

“There's nothing wrong with being a trapper,” Dag said. 

There wasn't and she also felt kind of like she had to defend Max. She could always eat as much as she wanted and he had shot the bear that kept them warm at night. 

“No, of course not,” Marie said. But there was a strained tone to her voice. 

The mood felt weird. Dag watched Max as he crossed the street a little further down. He was a bit bow-legged. Then she glanced at Marie. Was she envious? It hadn't occurred to her that Marie could be, since none of Dag's sisters wanted to marry him. Maybe Angharad might have, but she hadn't said so. 

Dag got the feeling then that maybe it wasn't true that there were new, young men in town. People came here sometimes, so it wasn't a completely preposterous claim, but now, the way Marie had said it... it made Dag doubt the truth of the story. 

“Have you seen Mrs Elmore?” she asked.

Mrs Elmore was the wife of the man who owned the saloon. She had nicer clothes than anyone else and always wore beautiful earrings. Piercing your ears would be easy, the earlobe was thin and soft, you could just take a needle and push it through, but Dag didn't have any earrings. 

“No, not today,” Marie said. 

After a while Max came back and walked up to where they were sitting.

“Ready?” he asked Dag. 

“Yeah.” She jumped down from the railing and turned to Marie. “Bye.” 

She smiled and at least Marie smiled back. “Bye.”

Dag went with Max back to the horses. When they got home she made dinner. Max had bought a newspaper, it was just a single sheet of paper, and he sat by the kitchen table reading it. As a kid Dag had liked watching the printing press, and Mr Burgundy who owned it and operated it always let her. 

When Max was done reading the paper he held it out to her. 

“I can't read,” she said. 

She could write her first name and that was it. There was no school here, there weren't enough kids in town for there to be one. Dad didn't have time to teach them to read and write, and there were so many other things that they needed to learn. 

“What does it say?” she asked. 

“Just, um... trouble in the south.”

“Have you ever been there? Down south?”

He hadn't always lived here. When Dag was little a man called Zed lived here in this cabin. She couldn't remember exactly when Max showed up. 

“Mm.”

“Do people really not wear any clothes?” 

He looked at her. “No, they do.”

That was a bit disappointing. It would look funny if people walked around naked.

“But are there houses as tall as mountains?”

“Some are pretty tall, but not like mountains.”

“Are you from there?” 

“No.”

“Where are your parents?”

“They're dead.”

“I'm sorry. They're with the gods and ancestors now.” 

“Do you believe that?”

She'd said it because that's what you were supposed to say when someone told you someone had died. 

“Yeah, I guess. I don't know. Don't you?”

“I don't know.”

**

The snow melted and in the middle of the day, when there was no wind, you could feel the sun against your face. Faint and distant, far away in the sky. 

Dag and Max went down to the lake, it was pretty close to the cabin. It felt very strange, getting undressed there on the stony beach with him. She wondered what he would think about her naked body. She could feel his gaze and she couldn't keep herself from looking at him too. She'd gotten glimpses, but seeing him completely naked was different. 

Light brown hair covered his chest and also went down from his bellybutton to the bush of hair between his legs. His thing was soft-looking now. He had a few scars, one along his ribs, and he looked big, his arms and shoulders much bigger than hers.

It was cold in the air and they went into the water, which was icy. Dag inhaled sharply as it stung her skin. She had the soap and she used it to wash her body and her hair, then she handed it to Max, careful not to drop it. She dipped her head under the water a few times, making sure she rinsed the soap out of her hair. 

Then they got up and quickly got dressed again. Dag squeezed as much water out of her hair as she could. She smiled at Max. 

“The first time every spring is the best,” she said. 

He didn't really reply, just made some non-committal noise. He looked at her, then stepped up to her and put his hand on her breast. Even through the dress she could feel the warmth of his palm. He squeezed a little, not hard, but his fingers dipped into the softness. 

They were all alone out here, but he shouldn't be doing this here anyway. Of course, he was her husband, so he was allowed to to these things.

She looked at him and he looked back. She liked it, the feeling of his hand on her breast. Then he dropped his hand and smiled a little. That took her by surprise, almost more than his touching. 

**

The nights weren't cold now and he pulled her nightgown all the way up, until she raised her arms and he could take it off her. He touched her breasts again, and his hands felt rough and gentle at the same time. She saw more of him too, when it didn't matter if the bear rug slipped off. She saw him fully hard, before he put it in her and it felt so good when he did. Her breathing quickened and she wondered if he noticed that, but she couldn't help it. 

“Do you bleed?” he asked her one day. 

They had just finished breakfast and she was clearing the table. The question was unexpected.

“No,” she said. 

Not everybody did. Angharad and Toast did, they got stomach cramps and had to put folded pieces of cloth between their legs to soak up the blood. 

Max looked at her. 

“You do know that we're unlikely to have children then?” he said. 

She didn't know that. An uneasy feeling spread inside. 

“Why?”

“Because it's usually women who bleed who can conceive,” he said. “Those who don't usually can't.”

Dag didn't know what to say. No one had told her that. She felt almost panicky.

“How do you know that?” she said. 

“I think a lot of people know.”

Only she hadn't. Bleeding meant you weren't having a baby, she didn't know you had to bleed to begin with. 

She turned away from him. She felt such horrible disappointment. She'd thought they were going to have a baby. They had to, when it felt so good, and he spilled inside her every time. She'd thought she would be able to because for some reason she had felt as if she was. Except now he told her she wasn't. 

It got quiet. He walked up to her, she could feel his presence, just behind her back.

“I'm not angry,” he said. 

She didn't say anything. She was trying not to cry. 

“Are you sad?” he asked. 

She was sad. And she felt so stupid. Why hadn't anyone told her? 

He put his hand on her shoulder.

“We can't know for sure,” he said. 

“Go away,” she said and pulled away from him. 

She kept her back turned and eventually he left. She started to cry then and she cried for a good long while, until her tears ran dry. She was lying on the bed, on the bear rug, and she ran her hand over the pelt. Maybe Max was wrong. There were a lot of people up here who couldn't have babies, but they said it was because of the long winters or something in the earth. Why would bleeding from between your legs now and then have anything to do with it?

That's when she figured out there was probably a connection between the two that people left out when they talked about it. There was something about the north that caused women not to bleed. She usually listened when people talked, you might always hear something interesting, so she knew that people always hoped that more people would move here, but then their children had the same problem anyway. She knew all this and yet she had thought that it would be like a lottery, that she might draw a winning ticket out of the tombola. She wished she had known about all of it from the beginning, so that she wouldn't have gotten her hopes up.


	3. Chapter 3

Dag did the housework, just as she had done before, and she and Max helped one another with the animals and the plot where they grew vegetables. She usually loved summer, but now she felt low-spirited. It seemed almost pointless, the things she did, cooking and cleaning and sewing, when it was just the two of them, and it would always be just the two of them. 

He hadn't touched her and that hurt too. She figured he didn't want to now when he knew it wouldn't take. Although, he might have known that for a while, since he had noticed she didn't bleed. She could ask, but he was difficult to talk to and she felt self-conscious about it all.

On Midsummer's Eve they went to the bonfire. It was in a field, pretty close to town. There was music and dancing. Quite a lot of drinking. 

“Hi.” Capable's smile was wide when she spotted Dag and came up to her. “I've been bursting to tell you! I'm getting married!”

“You are?” Dag smiled. 

“Yes. Nux has bought a piece of land.”

“That's such wonderful news!”

They hugged. A warm breeze made Dag's hair fall across her face, and she pushed it away again. She could smell the fire. Should she tell Capable? As far as Dag knew, she hadn't bled either. She decided to tell her later, not here, not now. 

She saw the rest of her family, hugged them all, even Dad. Then she stood and watched the bonfire. It was lit this night every year to protect against evil spirits. She wanted it to burn away the bad things in the earth, and the winter chill that went deep into the bones. Max came and stood next to her. He handed her a small flask. 

“Is it whiskey?” she asked.

“Mm.”

She didn't like whiskey, but she took a swig anyway. It burned on her tongue, all the way down to her stomach. She gave the flask back. 

“Do you wanna dance?” she asked.

“No.” He shook his head and looked as if that was highly unlikely ever to happen. 

“Where did you leave the food?” Dag asked after a while.

He didn't reply. He was staring at the fire and it seemed like he hadn't heard her.

“Max.” She touched his arm and he turned his head then. “Where did you put the food?”

The left side of his face was illuminated by the flames, the right one was in shadows. He looked at her for a second, then he blinked.

“By the oak,” he said. 

Dag went and fetched the satchel. Max had disappeared when she got back. She sat down in the grass and ate, shared the food with Angharad who came to sit down next to her. 

The musicians played and there was laughter and talking, but not right here. The spot Dag had chosen was not away from it all, but not in the middle of it either. The bonfire lit up the night and it felt as if it shone so bright and high that the gods saw it. 

“We probably won't have any children,” Dag said. 

Angharad turned her head and looked at her. 

“Then your children are with the gods and ancestors,” she said. 

That wasn't right. People who hadn't been born, that never existed, couldn't be there. Dag appreciated her saying it anyway, it felt good to hear. 

“Did you know you have to bleed, to have children?” Dag said.

“No.”

It was quiet for a moment. 

“I wish I had known,” Angharad said. 

She was so beautiful, the prettiest of all of them. It was unlikely that she would ever marry, though. Men usually didn't care to raise other men's children. 

Dag wondered if Max was horribly disappointed with her. 

Toast came and sat down with them too after a moment. 

“I've walked backwards five times around a birch now,” she said. 

“What did you wish for?” Angharad said.

“I can't say, then it won't come true.”

“Can you tell Capable what I told you?” Dag said to Angharad.

Angharad nodded. 

“Tell her what?” Toast said and Angharad told her first. 

“I'm scared Max is angry with me now,” Dag confessed. 

“He can't be angry with you for that,” Toast said. “Lots of people don't have children.”

“But maybe he wanted to.”

Toast made a hesitant face. 

“If that were the case,” she said, “and he knew how to tell, he would have asked Dad which ones of us bled and which ones of us didn't.”

“Dad doesn't know that,” Dag said. 

“But Dad could have asked us,” Toast said. “He really wanted to marry one of us off with Max so he would have asked, which means Max didn't ask.”

That made sense, but then Dag thought about how Max hadn't shown any interest in doing it with her since they talked about it. 

He showed up again after a while, and when people started to leave they did too. As they left the field they walked behind Trevor and Bull for a short while. They were brothers, Dad's age or more, but you could see from the way they both moved that they weren't plagued by any ailments. Dag had been scared of them when she was little. Not for any particular reason, other than that they looked like wild, hard men and they never said much. 

She realized then that she was married to a man who was very much like that. That was a bit funny, when you thought about it. 

Bull had shot the stag whose head was mounted on the wall in the saloon. Dag had been in there and seen it the first time when she was really little, because Angharad had told her that she had to go in there and count the points on its antlers, knowing full well that Dag couldn't count to numbers that high. But Dag was little and didn't think about that, so she tried to do it anyway, until Mr Elmore kicked her out. It was a dare and a joke and Angharad had laughed at her. 

Trevor and Bull turned their heads and nodded as a greeting to Max. Dag saw in the corner of her eye that Max nodded a little in return. Then Trevor seemed to remember himself and turned around again.

“Ma'am,” he said.

Being called that felt really weird.

“Hi.”

“Heard war boys have been sighted as far up as Miller's creek,” Trevor said, glancing back at Max again. 

Max hummed in reply.

“Might be not even the winters are as deterring as they used to be,” Trevor said.

Then they didn't say anything else and after a few more steps Trevor and Bull turned onto another path.

Dag thought about her sisters at home. They would all be heading down to the lake now for a midnight plunge, they always did on Midsummer's Eve. It was supposed to make you healthy, but it was mostly just for fun.

“Do you want to go down to the lake?” she asked Max when they got home. It would feel weird not to. Right now everything felt so weird already and she didn't like it.

“Sure.”

It was dark, but it was a starry night and the moon provided enough light to see by. On the beach they stripped and waded into the water. It was smooth against her skin and the surface was black except for where the moonlight made it glitter like silver. 

She startled when something brushed against her, but then she realized it was Max's hand. He slid it up her arm, over her shoulder and down to her breast. He touched her like that for a moment, then slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. In the water his skin felt slippery. She could feel it, the hard length of him, pressing against her. 

She put her hands on his shoulders, then slid them down across his chest, felt the hair against her palms. The feel of him was different, masculine and hard. She hadn't touched him like this before, but she did now because she was so relieved he wanted her. It felt exciting. He ran his hands over her back, down to her butt which he squeezed a little, and she was pressed a little tighter to him. His thing was so close, she felt it against her belly and she wanted him to put it in. 

They got out of the water and she thought they would get dressed and go home, but he maneuvered her down onto the ground, just threw their clothes together a bit so that she ended up on them. Then he was lying between her legs and she exhaled sharply when he pushed inside. 

He moved inside her and it felt wonderful, that hot feeling running all the way down her thighs, but mostly where he was filling her. She had her arms around him and his back was warm. She could feel the muscles underneath his skin. 

Her breaths were quick and erratic and she hoped he couldn't hear it over his own breathing. She squeezed her eyes shut, it felt so good. More, and more, and more; she didn't know what to do with it. She curled her toes, pulled her knees up a little and then she felt herself convulse as the most amazing feeling rushed through her, like waves rolling out from between her legs through her body. She gasped. 

She stared up at the stars and the moon, as Max pressed himself close again and again, and then he finished. He lay still for a while, his bearded cheek almost resting against hers. Then he pulled out and sat up. 

Had he noticed what had happened to her? Did he know that could happen? He looked down at her where she was still lying flat on her back. She sat up too then. They were sitting on most of their clothes, but his shirt was next to her and she handed it to him. 

She could feel him looking at her. 

“Did you like it?” he said. 

She felt bit embarrassed, and surprised that he asked that. No one had told her that she would enjoy doing this too. The only thing she had ever heard anyone say was that men liked it and you did it to have babies. So she didn't know what to say. 

She looked at him and in the pale moonlight she could see that he was smiling. Her heart skipped a beat then.

“Yes,” she said. 

They got up and put on their clothes. Dag felt a little wobbly on her feet. As they walked home she wrung the water from her hair. She could feel another wetness on the inside of her thighs. 

**

“Are you sad?” Dag asked one evening when they had gone to bed. “That we won't have children?”

Ember glowed in the fireplace, a few flames still licked the logs. It was quiet for a few seconds before Max answered.

“No,” he said. “Are you?”

“Yeah, a bit. I didn't know.”

She was looking up at the ceiling. 

“Why didn't you ask if I bled, before you married me?” she asked. 

He didn't reply right away. 

“I didn't want to know,” he said then. 

He was quiet again for a moment.

“I had children.” 

Dag turned her head and looked at him. She was completely taken by surprise by that. She noticed the past tense. 

“How many children did you have?” she asked.

“Two.”

He looked back at her.

“Did they die?” she asked.

He nodded. 

She felt so bad for him. No one should have to outlive their children, she had heard that being said many times. She'd had another sister, Ella, who died when she was five. She fell down from a cliff. Dag was just a small child then too, but it was the only time she'd seen her dad cry. 

“They're with the gods and ancestors now,” she said. “I really do believe that.”

She didn't know why it hadn't occurred to her that he could have been married before, he was older than she was. 

“You don't want to have children again?” she said after a while.

He was quiet for a moment, then he shook his head a little and looked at her. “I'm sorry you're sad,” he said. “If the gods would will it, I'd give you a child.”

She felt sad, about all of it, but talking to him like this made her feel good in a way, too. 

“Did your wife die too?” she asked.

He nodded. 

It was strange to think that he'd had another wife. Dag found it strange to think that she was his wife now. 

She scooted closer to him, then paused until he moved his arm so that she could lie down right next to him. Her head fit perfectly under his chin. His skin felt hot, the hair on his chest tickling her nose and her cheek. He put his arm around her, the weight of it felt solid. 

This was really nice. She had hugged Toast in bed at night at times, if either one of them had been upset, but this felt different. Different because he was her husband. 

“Can you tell me a story? About the south maybe?” she said.

“It's not a good story.”


	4. Chapter 4

When Max went hunting he could be gone for days. Dag found that difficult to get used to. During the day it was alright. She tended to the animals and she had lots of things to do, mostly preserving food for the winter. But the nights were another matter; she had never slept alone before. 

She lay awake, watching the crackling fire. The bed seemed empty and that emptiness went under her skin. She felt cold, but she wasn't really. She thought about Max, out there in the forest. Maybe he was awake right now too, waiting and watching out for his prey. But he had to sleep and she wondered if he felt lonely, sleeping alone out there. He probably didn't; he had been on his own before. 

Capable had married Nux and Dag thought about them too. She wondered how Capable found married life and hoped that she would see her soon. Maybe she could talk to her a bit, about the strangeness of being someone's wife and about the nice things and the loneliness that were both part of it.

She wondered if Dad had it easier now that two of his daughters were married and had left home. He worked so hard and he didn't really say anything, but she could see it in his eyes, the defeat when they had to scrape. She had heard people say that there was no greater pain than watching your children go hungry. She wondered if Max children ever had to. He kept her well-fed and not lacking anything, but it was harder the more you were. 

Maybe not having any children could be a good thing too. She thought she could understand why Max thought so. He'd lost two children. Maybe he didn't want to risk having to live through that again. 

She kept herself awake, thinking too much. She rolled over, closer to the wall where Max usually slept. His pillow smelled of him. She didn't like sleeping alone. 

But she did sleep, and one morning she woke up and he was back. 

“Hi,” she said when she opened her eyes and saw him standing over by the stove.

“Hi.”

She smiled. He must have just walked through the door, he still had his coat on, but he had built a new fire in the fireplace. Outside the windows it was still dark.

“You can sleep a little longer,” he said.

But she was awake now and sat up. Everything felt a bit hazy, though, the way it did when sleep and dreams still clung to your mind. 

He was making tea. When it was finished he poured two cups and brought one over to her in the bed. She could smell him then, sweaty and rank. She took the cup and jokingly chinked it against his.

“I think you should bathe,” she said then. 

He looked at her. “Mm,” he said. 

She drank her tea sitting in bed, then she got up. She worked around the house while Max worked outside. He went down to the lake a little later and washed. 

**

“Do you want me to cut your hair?” Dag asked. 

It had just gotten longer and longer, he hadn't cut it since they were married. He cut his beard now and then, she'd seen him do it. 

She'd also seen something else that she found wildly interesting. It was one time when she got back from having visited her family. He was taking a break from his work, it seemed, and he was touching himself, using his hand. He hadn't heard her, which in itself was unusual, but it was good that he hadn't, because it meant she got to witness this. It was very exciting, she didn't know men could do that. She didn't tell Max that she had seen, but she liked knowing he did that. She liked how he had looked when he did it. 

Now he looked up from his breakfast and nodded. When they were finished eating they went outside. Dag brought a pair of scissors and her comb. Maybe he owned a comb, she didn't know, but if he did he had forgotten about it. 

He sat down on the chopping-block and pulled his shirt over his head. There was a distinct chill in the air, all the leaves were turning brown and falling from the trees, but she'd be quick about cutting his hair. How hard could it be?

He didn't move as she stood behind him. His hair was light brown and so soft against her fingers. Wisps of it fell to the ground or were taken by the wind when she cut it. The scissors made a swishing sound. Her heart ached in her chest and she couldn't really explain why. It was just something about how it felt to touch his head and knowing that he could feel her fingers as she did so. 

When she was finished she brushed some loose strands from the top of his head. She had a sudden urge to lean down and rub her nose against his neck, but she didn't. She did let her fingers slide through his now much shorter hair, though, rubbing against his scalp. He didn't say anything and she wondered what he was thinking.

“Done,” she said then. 

He stood up and brushed at his shoulders with his hand before pulling his shirt back on. Dag gathered her own hair in her hand, then took off a couple of inches. There, that was much quicker. 

“Can you go into town? Need some things,” Max said.

“Okay.”

He gave her money and wrote a note saying what kind of ammunition she was supposed to buy. She put a saddle on One and rode off towards town. 

Going into the store was fun. She'd never had any money before, had never actually bought anything. Most things were on shelves behind the counter, but there were some baskets and crates along the side wall too. 

Mr Burgundy smiled at her when it was her turn. She liked him. 

“What can I do for you today?” he asked, as if she was in here buying things all the time. 

“Um... liniment, a small bottle of whiskey, matches, soap and a newspaper. And ammunition.” 

She handed him the note Max had written and he looked at it. 

“Of course, we'll see to that,” he said. 

He went and collected the things from the shelves. Right across from where she was standing were a small collection of cans with red labels. It said something in black letters on them. 

“What are those?” she asked and pointed at them.

“Canned peaches,” Mr Burgundy said. “It's a fruit. It's sweet, you eat it for dessert.”

“Oh.”

She wanted to buy one, but Max hadn't said that she could, she didn't know if they could afford it. She wished she had known there would be such a thing in the store, so that she could have asked him before she left. She had never eaten any kind of fruit that came out of a can, but she liked apples and pears. 

She paid for her purchases and Mr Burgundy helped her put them in the satchel she had brought. 

“Have a nice day,” he said then, bowing slightly.

Dag smiled. “You too.”

Out on the street she stopped and talked to a few people she knew, then she headed back home. 

“They had canned peaches in the store,” she told Max.

“What?”

“Peaches, I think, a fruit in cans. Have you eaten that?”

“No.”

“Can we buy one?”

Max made a hesitant face. 

“Things from cans isn't good,” he said. “It's the same as we have during winter.”

“No, but this is something else,” she said. But she was going to drop it. He didn't want to buy one and maybe they didn't have the money for it. 

He looked at her. “You really want to buy one, you can buy one,” he said then. 

“No, I don't have to. Well, maybe if they still have them next time.”

She smiled and he smiled back a little. He looked so sweet when he did that, she wished he'd do it more often. 

**

The first snow fell and people said it was earlier than last year. They always said that, every year, so it couldn't be true, or the already short summer would have been nonexistent. People worried about trouble south of here, but it was always trouble down south. 

Dag started sewing new pillowcases and she made up new stories that she told Max. He actually told her one too. It was short, but it was a true one. It was about him and one time when he went through the ice on a lake. He told her he had to run, even though it was far, all the way back to the house where he was staying, because he knew that if he stopped he'd freeze to death. 

“Were you scared?” she asked.

He nodded. “When I was in the water, before I knew if I'd manage to get out.”

At night she held her arms around him when he was inside her. She couldn't, and didn't bother to, hide the way she was panting, and that amazing thing happened to her again. It had happened a few times, not every time, but it was so wonderful, she wanted to tell him. 

He lay down on his back next to her when they were done, and she glanced at him.

“Sometimes...” she began and he turned his head to look at her. “Sometimes when you're doing it, this really great thing happens to me.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I'm inside you. I can feel it.”

“I wasn't sure if you did.” 

She scratched her nose, where a strand of hair was tickling her. 

“It feels really good,” she said then. 

He nodded and smiled a little at her. He had really beautiful eyes.

“Like I'm floating,” she said. 

She didn't know how else to describe it, so she didn't say anything more. 

“Go to sleep now,” he said. 

The next morning she was alone in the bed. She didn't wake up any more when he climbed over her to get up. She stretched like a cat, then she got up and washed and dressed, before she went to the outhouse. When she came out from there again she could see a rider at the fringe of the forest. 

Dawn was just breaking and she couldn't see who it was, not until he was much closer. It was Bull.

“Ma'am,” he said when he stopped in front of her and inclined his head an inch.

“Hi.”

“Max around?”

“Yeah, somewhere. I'll go look for him.”

She didn't have to look. Max came out of the stable just moments later. Dag stayed out there, because she wanted to hear what they were saying. 

“Seems we got a thief around here,” Bull said. “Trevor and I were out yesterday, southwest, and we saw a man emptying a trap. Nothing strange about it, except on the way back we passed a little closer, and I say to Trevor that looks like one of Max Rockatansky's traps. You weren't out there yesterday?”

“No.”

“Just wanted to let you know. I'll keep my eyes open.”

“Appreciate it.”

“You want some tea?” Dag asked, looking up at Bull where he sat on his horse.

He shook his head. “Better get going.” 

Dag turned to Max when Bull rode off and they headed back inside.

“Who do you think it was?” she asked.

“Don't know.”

That wasn't the last theft, though. Max came home, more than once, and was angry because someone, or someones, had emptied his traps. 

Dag hadn't seen him angry before and she didn't know what to do.

“I'll help you set new ones,” she said. “If you show me how to do it, I can set some.”

“Doesn't help if someone else empties them.” His reply was gruff.

“There's lots of rabbits and badgers and other animals...”

“This is what we live off!”

He was frowning and stared angrily at her. She looked back at him. After a moment he left and went outside.


	5. Chapter 5

At the winter solstice there was so much snow outside that Dag couldn't see out the window, but they mostly kept it covered with an animal hide anyway, to keep the warmth from escaping. They had cleared paths to the outhouse and the stable. The days were short and today, as the last flickers of remaining daylight faintly painted the sky in the west, they went outside. 

It was the little goat, not so little any longer, that they were going to sacrifice. They brought it outside by a rope around its throat. It bleated against the cold and its breath fogged, just like theirs. 

It felt a bit strange doing this just the two of them, when previously she had been with her entire family. At home they'd sacrificed pigs. It was always Dad who did the killing, and Max did it now. He held the goat so that it couldn't move, and then he drew the knife across its throat. 

Dag was ready with the bowl, crouched and held it so that it collected the blood that flowed out. Some still ended up on the ground, droplets of red staining the snow. When the goat had bled out she rose again. 

She dipped her fingers into the bowl, the blood was warm and wet, and then she looked at Max. He was looking back at her and his eyes looked dark in the fading light. Let him be with me always, always, always, she thought, a silent prayer inside her head. That was new for her, she had never prayed for anything that specific before. She flicked her fingers so that the blood sprinkled on him. 

Then she handed the bowl to him and he did the same to her. She blinked when the blood hit her face. Warm dots against her skin, a stark contrast to the cold winter air. 

They smeared blood on the outside walls of their house, what they could reach of it because of the snow, as protection against revenants. Dad had always said there were no such things, what was dead was dead, but you could never be sure. They had done it anyway, and Dag and Max did it now. It was also a reminder that they were living beings who lived here, with blood of their own, despite the deadness of winter. 

Dag took what was left in the bowl after that and poured it into a pot on the stove. She'd make black soup of it. Max took care of gutting and skinning the goat. 

During the coldest months they stayed in a lot. Cheedo had called it hibernating, when the snow wouldn't allow much movement. Dag missed her, missed all of them. Max got restless, being indoors so much. He wanted to do it a lot, more than usual, and she didn't feel like it every time. He noticed she wasn't as enthusiastic, though, and he wasn't on her every day after that.

He did however come up with some things for her to do. He wrote down her full name, including her new last name, and then she practiced writing it herself, but her hand quickly got cold, holding the pen. He tried to teach her to read, but he wasn't a very good teacher, or maybe she was just bad at reading. They used an old newspaper but it was just a swarm of black symbols, and the paper ended up in the fire. 

As soon as it was possible he headed out. Dag thought that was a bit of a relief. When he wasn't home she could do things her own way, in her own time. It also felt good when they could trudge through the snow to see her family. They brought some meat with them and Dag helped cook it together with her sisters, just like they used to. Capable wasn't there, though. She and Nux lived on the other side of town. 

**

A while later Dag was home alone again for a few days, Max was going out to hunt wolves, and she didn't like it. She didn't say anything about it, his hunting was their livelihood, but she still wasn't used to sleeping by herself. When she had time, when her chores allowed, she could go see her family, or go into town, but the nights were lonely all the same. 

It was early morning, ten days since Max had left to go hunting, that she was awoken by someone roughly shaking her shoulder. She let out a scream, before she saw that it was Max. 

“Get up, get dressed.”

“What?”

“Get up. There's people coming, bad people, lots of them, we have to go.”

She didn't understand what he was saying. He was still in his coat and warm clothes. 

“Dag!” He grabbed her by her upper arms and lifted her out of bed. The air in the room was cold and the floor icy against her bare feet when they connected with it. “We have to go now.”

He had startled her by suddenly grabbing her like that, and now she was awake. And frightened. Get dressed. She moved towards her dress, which she had left over the back of a chair yesterday.

“No, you need to be able to ride hard,” Max said. “Here.”

He shoved some of his clothes at her and she started getting dressed by pulling on a pair of his underpants. 

“What people?” she said.

“A war clan.”

“Here?”

He was putting things into satchels. Her fingers felt stiff and she fumbled lacing his pants at the front. She pulled on the shirt, then the waistcoat. It was made from deerskin and really soft. Max walked up to her and wrapped a belt around her, then took the coat, also his, and made her put it on quickly. He was scaring her even worse by behaving like this. It had to be so bad. A war clan? Up here? 

He snatched the bear rug from the bed. 

“Let's go,” he said. 

“My clothes, and...”

“Leave it.”

They walked out to the stable and saddled the horses. Max stuffed things into the saddle bags, then gave her one of the two satchels to put diagonally across her back. It was heavy. 

“My family,” she said and he nodded, as if he had already been thinking that. 

They rode off through the woods, towards her family's house. 

She could hear it even before they could see through the trees what was going on. Shouts and screams. Cold fear gripped her, worse than before. She urged her horse on and would have ridden straight up to the house if Max hadn't caught the reins and made them both stop.

“No!” she said.

“Ssh!”

He dismounted and she did the same. They didn't have to walk far to see between the trees. It was chaos and horror down there. There were people all around the house, strange people, and they were running around and yelling. She saw Toast on the ground in front of the house and a man violently moving between her legs. The front door was open. Windows smashed. All of this hit Dag's eyes, all at once, and she started to move forward, but Max caught her, one arm around her middle, his other hand over her mouth.

“It's too late, we have to go,” he said, his voice close to her ear. 

She struggled to get free. Toast was down there. Hadn't he seen? Blinding panic filled her. They had to get down there! 

“We have to go. If you scream, they'll kill us.”

He made her go back to the horses and she felt almost like she couldn't breath, but she was breathing and they rode away. Through the forest. She couldn't keep track of where they were going, it felt as if they were riding in zigzag. 

When they finally stopped it was almost nightfall again. She was exhausted, her legs hurt, but nothing hurt as much as it did inside. She looked at Max who was letting the horses drink from a creek. There were tall trees all around them.

“We eat, then rest for a bit,” he said.

She didn't know where it came from, she felt bone deep tired, but she charged at him. She caught him by surprise and managed to land a blow to his face. Then he caught her wrist, and he caught her other wrist, and her attempt to tackle him failed. 

“We should have helped them and we just left! You have weapons! Why didn't you do something, you beast!”

She felt as if something was cutting her inside. 

“They were too many. I couldn't do anything.”

“We just left them!” She stared at him. 

“Keep your voice down.” He was still holding her arms. 

“We left them!”

How could they do that? How could she do that? Her sisters. Dad. Angharad's baby boy. 

“We left them! We have to go back!”

“We can't go back.” He was meeting her gaze.

“We have to!”

“Ssh.”

He let go of one of her arms, she wasn't struggling any longer, and put his hand on her face, holding her jaw.

“You have to be quiet,” he said. “We're not that far away, and we don't know who else is out here.”

She looked to the side, in among the trees. She could feel every breath going in and out of her chest, quick and shallow. 

Was this really happening?

Max wanted her to eat, but she couldn't. They sat down by a tree, he with his back against the trunk, and he pulled her close. They had two bear rugs, the one he had when he was out hunting and the one from their bed; they sat on one and the other was on top of them. He put his arm around her and held her with her head against his chest. 

She didn't sleep. She didn't even close her eyes. She just stayed like that, with him, while her family was back there. It was cold and dark out here. 

It wasn't dawn yet when he moved. He hadn't slept either, she knew he hadn't, but maybe that was intentional. 

She had to pee and it was more work getting the pants down than she was used to. Usually she could just lift her skirt and squat. She didn't care that Max saw her. He peed too, standing up. 

“You should eat,” he said then.

She shook her head.

“At least drink some water. You have to.”

She drank some water and then they mounted the horses. Her legs and butt hurt. She had never spent that much time on a horse, as she had done yesterday. 

She lost track of time, riding like this, the forest around here unfamiliar and monotonous. She only knew that it hurt and she felt scared and more anguished than she ever had. 

“Where are we going?” she asked eventually.

“They came from southwest, we're heading east.”

“What in the east?”

Max glanced at her. 

“Hopefully not war.”

They found a cave. Or rather, Max knew it was there. The dark cliffside rose straight up towards the darkening sky, and the cave was not much more than a narrow crack in it. But it was shelter from the wind. 

Dag's legs wouldn't hold her when she got down from the horse. She caught herself with her hands on the ground. Max came to help her, but she managed to get up again by herself. 

They had a fire and something hot to eat. Max had stuffed food, among other things, into the satchels. Dag wondered if her family had managed to get out. Dad had a rifle, he could have fought, but even as she thought it she knew that he had to have been overpowered already when she and Max got there. He would never have let anyone do what that man did to Toast if he could have stopped it. 

Thinking about Toast made her feel a nauseating, horrible pain. Her poor, poor sister. 

“Do you think they're alive?” she said and her voice sounded strange to her own ears. 

Max didn't reply. Dag looked away. Why couldn't the gods help her? 

“We don't know about Capable and Nux,” Max said. 

Dag snatched her gaze back to him.

“We could look for them,” she said. 

“We need to keep heading east.”

“But they could have made it. They're on the other side of town. We have to try and find them.”

“No.”

“You can't decide that, she's my sister!”

“We can't go back.”

It was as if he wasn't even hearing her.

“We could go another way,” she said, feeling desperate and wildly hopeful at the same time. She could find Capable. She had to find Capable. “Maybe if we just wait a few days...”

“We can never go back. The town has no defenses, they're war boys, they will take it. And if they leave again, there will be nothing left.”

He met her gaze.

“No...”

“Dag, I'm so sorry.”

She started to cry. She didn't want to cry. She turned her face away from him. She leaned her head against her arms resting on her knees. 

She startled when he suddenly put his hand on her shoulder. She hadn't heard him move. 

“Leave me be,” she said. 

He did. He went back to where he had been sitting before. 

“We need to get some sleep,” he said. 

She didn't think she'd be able to sleep, but she did and was woken by a nightmare. It was still dark. She was so cold. Her whole body ached.

“Max?”

“Yeah?”

She couldn't see him, but she heard what direction his voice came from and she crawled on all four over there, pulling the rug along with her. She fumbled in the dark, felt his coat under her palm but didn't know if it was the back or the front, then his hand found hers. She lay down next to him and buried her face against his chest. He put his arm around her and held her close.


	6. Chapter 6

They rode for eight more days through the woods, staying away from the regular routes. At night they huddled close to each other for warmth and, at least in Dag's case, for some sense of security. She had only him now, so she clung to him. 

She felt as if she was in some kind of bubble, where everything was muted. There wasn't even birds in the treetops, or if there was she didn't hear them. She was so tired. Max looked for tracks on the ground, got off his horse now and then to have a closer look. But they didn't see anyone. 

When they got close to another town, Max knew it was there, but Dag had only heard of it, they slowed their pace. 

“This way,” Max said and steered his horse further on, in among the trees.

Dag could see the road through the trees, a short way downhill, but she followed him. 

Seeing houses felt strange, and like a relief. Max had been here before, maybe someone would help them. Dag wanted so much for something, anything, to feel normal. They approached through the forest, staying out of sight. 

It looked perfectly ordinary. A street lined by houses, not unlike their own town, but not exactly the same which made it look slightly askew to Dag. She didn't see anyone.

“Where is everyone...” she began, but Max hushed her. 

She thought she could hear something, faintly, on the wind. She thought of revenants. 

They rode a little further, which gave them a clear view of the main street and then she saw it. At first she thought it was a pile of hay and for a second she wondered what kind of strange people put hay in the middle of town, and at this time of year. Then she realized it wasn't hay at all. It was people. 

She made a noise. It was involuntary, her throat did it by itself. Max turned his horse around.

“Let's go. Quick,” he said, his voice low, almost a whisper.

They rode back into the forest, at a quicker pace now. 

She felt sick, something inside her stomach twisted and turned nauseatingly. 

“Wait, I'm gonna throw up.”

“We can't stop, they're still there.”

“No one was there, they're all...” She could see it for her inner eye, that pile of limbs, they almost didn't look human and at the same time it was horrifyingly obvious that they were. 

“They burn them,” Max said. “And they haven't yet. They're still there. If you're gonna be sick, you have to do it riding.”

In the end she didn't throw up. They were heading north. 

“Where are we going?” she asked after a while.

“North.”

“We're in the north.”

“We'll go up through the mountains.”

“But there's nothing up there.”

“We don't know how far east they are. The major road passes through that town, chances are they're on it.”

It felt like a nightmare. She had them during the nights, but being awake felt exactly the same.

Heading up the mountains meant it got colder and colder, and windier and windier. If it had been during the coldest months they wouldn't have been able to get up there, but even now it was harsh. 

Dag felt bad for One and Two, struggling in the rough terrain, and she felt bad for herself. The nights were so cold, even though she lay pressed tightly against Max, wrapped in the bear rugs. She cried, her face hidden against his coat. She longed for home, for their bed and their fireplace, every single little thing in the cabin filled her with such yearning when she thought about them. And her sisters, and Dad, that hurt more than she had tears for. 

It felt almost unreal when they came across a house. It wasn't more than a hut, but it still looked wildly out of place, sticking out of the snow right out here in the wilderness. The snowdrifts around it were nearly as tall as the walls, and there was a narrow chimney on the roof, no smoke coming out of it. 

Who could live up here? It was completely isolated and the snow had to cover the entire hut in midwinter. 

Right now it was the only good thing that had happened to them for what felt like a very long time. They had to wade through the snow, shovel it out of the way as best they could, to get to the front door. Dag thought it might be locked, but Max put his shoulder against it and it budged. 

It was as cold in there as it was outside, and dark. It smelled stuffy and strange. They opened the door as wide as it would go to let as much light in as possible. 

It was just one room, smaller than their cabin. There was a bed, a table and two chairs, a chest by the foot of the bed. A fireplace, but no stove. Whoever lived there wasn't there now and Dag and Max brought their things inside. Behind the hut was a small stable and they took the horses in there, wiped them down and fed them. 

Dag was too tired to feel guilty about breaking into someone else's home. She thought about their cabin and felt worried about what would happen to it. It was stupid, because Max had said they could never go back there, but she wanted to so bad. She thought about their goats, who hadn't been given food or water for days now and were probably dead. Maybe the war boys had been there, and that felt even worse. 

“Do you think the war boys will come up here?” Dag asked. 

“No.”

They got a fire started and ate, sitting on chairs for the first time in what seemed like forever. There was a thick layer of dust on the table. 

Max found a bottle on a shelf and opened it. He held it under his nose before he took a swig, then held it out to Dag. She shook her head. She assumed it was whiskey. 

He went to sit on the bed and he continued drinking until there was nothing left in the bottle. Then he lay down on his back on the bed and closed his eyes. 

Dag was sitting on one of the chairs, listening to the fire crackle. She was tired, she should sleep, but her muscles ached and ached. After a while she got up and brought one of the rugs over to the bed. Max had fallen asleep without anything but the bare mattress that was on the bed, but he was still fully clothed. 

Dag tried to get him to move, so that there would be room for her, but he was out cold. She felt irritated. Did he have to drink an entire bottle of whiskey? Eventually he did move a bit, though, when she shoved at him hard. 

She woke up when he climbed over her and for a short, wonderful moment she thought she was at home. Then she opened her eyes and saw where she was, in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, and reality came crashing back in. 

The door was open and Max was just outside, throwing up. She could hear it, the retching sound. 

He only had himself to blame, but she didn't have it in her to think like that. He'd gotten them here, and she hadn't been of any use at all. She got up. 

“Are you alright?” she asked when he came back inside.

“Better now.”

He looked tired. If you looked past the beard he looked pretty young. Thirty, or maybe he was thirty-one now, wasn't old. He only had some faint lines around his eyes, mostly visible when he smiled. But he wasn't smiling now. 

“Let's go back to bed,” he said. 

It was morning, Dag had seen it through the doorway, but they went back to bed anyway. Max put his arm around her. She didn't think she'd be able to go back to sleep again, but she dozed off. 

The next time they woke up they went out to feed the horses. Dag tried not to think about how they would eventually run out of food. She wasn't sure how long the snow remained up here, if it melted at all. She went around the corner to relieve herself. She really didn't like wearing pants, it was much more hassle than a dress. She and Max were about the same height, so they were neither too long nor too short, but they felt odd on her body.

They melted snow in a bowl over the fire, then got undressed to wash. It was warm enough in the hut to do that now. Dag used her hands to rub the water against her skin, especially her scalp, under her arms and between her legs. 

They melted more snow, there was no lack of it, and washed out their clothes. Despite the fire the air in the hut was chilly, and Dag wrapped one of the rugs around her shoulders. 

There was a piece of paper on the mantelpiece and she took it and unfolded it. A spindly script wound itself across the paper. 

“What does this say?” She walked over to Max and handed him the paper. 

He looked at it. 

“It's the woman who lived here,” he said then. “She went up the mountain.”

“Oh. Did she write this before?”

“Mm.”

“When?”

“Last winter.”

“Does it say anything else? Why'd she do it?”

“It says her husband died the previous winter, she was alone.”

“Who'd she write this for?”

Max shook his head a little. “Not for anyone.”

Dag put the paper back on the mantelpiece. She felt sad. Dying in the snow was painless. You were cold at first, but then you felt warm. People who had been close to freezing to death said so. Still, going out to do it on purpose was scary. Dag wondered if she would have been able to and realized that she probably would. If she had been all alone. If she hadn't had Max. 

But he was here, just like she had prayed, that he would be with her always. A cold feeling started to spread inside her then. She'd only prayed to keep him. She hadn't said anything in her prayer about her family. 

She felt sick. I meant them too, she thought desperately. But she knew perfectly well that during the winter solstice, during the sacrifice, she'd thought only of him. And now she had lost them. 

Max found a box of glass jars, filled with preserved food of different kinds, and he was putting them on the table. 

“We can't steal it,” Dag said. 

He looked at her.

“She's dead. It doesn't belong to anyone.”

That was harsh, even though it might have been true. Dag looked in the chest by the bed. In it were beautifully embroidered handkerchiefs, six of them, and two dresses. One was made of linen and the other was made of dark brown wool. The stitches were perfect, made with such care, and they looked as if they hardly, if ever, had been used. 

Max looked up from the table. 

“Bring that here, we can wrap the jars in it,” he said.

Dag felt disappointed. She had to admit she wanted to steal too, but she wanted the dresses for herself, to wear. But she didn't say anything about it, because she knew it was more practical to wear Max's clothes and who knew how much further they'd have to ride. 

She brought the dresses over to him and they wrapped the glass jars in them before putting them in the satchels. Dag didn't show him the handkerchiefs though, in case he'd want them for something too, like to blow his nose in, or say they didn't need them. She squirreled them away, put them in her saddlebag when he wasn't looking. They were so beautiful and, like he said, they didn't really belong to anyone now. 

They stayed one more night in the hut and the next morning they closed the door behind them when they left. Dag sent a grateful thought to the woman who had lived there, food and shelter were mighty gifts and you had to be grateful for them. She hoped the woman was with the gods and ancestors now. The same gods and ancestors, she thought with a sinking feeling, who had tricked her so horribly.


	7. Chapter 7

They headed east along the narrow pathways and snowy terrain of the mountains. The cold was biting. Max had frost in his beard. In the evenings they sat close to the fire and held their hands in front of the flames. 

“We head south again tomorrow,” Max said. “Down from the mountain. This is rough on the horses.”

“You think there aren't any war boys down there now?” 

“I don't know.”

“What if there is?”

He pulled his hand over his beard. “Then we collect as much food as we can, and head back to that hut.”

“What, live there?”

He nodded a little. 

Dag didn't want to live in the mountains. There were no people, at all. It would just be her and Max. She thought of the woman who had lived there before. If Max died, and eventually he would, that would be Dag. 

“But not forever?” she said. 

“I don't know.” 

She felt all hollow inside. 

“Why did the war boys have to come here?” she said. 

They had always left the far north alone before. Life up here was hard and the people who lived here didn't have any riches. 

“Could be different reasons,” Max said. “They've had some lean years down south, failing crops, maybe they've run out of resources.”

But they had so much in the south; all the amazing things she'd seen, like Mr Burgundy's printing press and clocks and the music box that a couple who lived in town before had, they all came from the south.

“How do you know that?” Dag asked.

“Was in the paper.”

“But you've seen them before, right? Dad said...” Talking about Dad hurt. “He said you've been in the war.”

Max nodded a little. 

“How come?”

He was quiet for a moment. 

“My, um... my wife belonged to a clan, and when they were attacked and went to war, I fought with them.”

“She was from the south?”

“Mm.”

“You lived there?”

He nodded a little. “For a while.” 

He had never said. She thought of the war boys she'd seen, what they'd done. 

“How could you do that?” she said. “Be with them?”

He looked at her. 

“The war clans are just people,” he said. “They're farmers and merchants, same as here. And they're not all the same.”

Dag thought about it for a while. The wars had always seemed so far away.

“What happened to her?” she asked then.

Max shook his head, as if he wasn't going to talk about it. She looked at him for a moment, but he was looking at the fire. 

Maybe he had been sweet on her. Dag felt a strange sort of envy thinking about it, about the woman who had been his wife first, who was from the south, who had borne him children. 

“What's it like, living in the south?” she asked, because she didn't want to think anymore about his other wife.

“Not that different from here.” He looked at her again. “It was still the north, where I lived.”

“But you've seen tall houses and machines and things?”

“Not there.”

They lay down to sleep soon after that and the next morning they started making their way down from the mountain. It was treacherous in places and they had to dismount and lead the horses down the winding pathways. The place where they made camp that evening was windy. Dag couldn't sleep, the wind whispering in her ear and freezing her skin. She pressed her face against Max's chest and tried to get as close as she could, when he suddenly made a noise and gripped her hip, holding her still.

“Don't do that,” he said after a moment. 

“I'm just cold.”

“You kicked me.”

“I didn't mean to. I'm sorry.”

“Just lie still.”

She stopped wriggling. She could feel the warmth of her own breath against his coat. 

“Don't kick me in the nuts, that hurts,” he said.

She hadn't heard that word before, but she could work out what it meant.

“Okay.”

**

It was far less snow as they got further down, but the ground was still white. They made camp at the foot of the mountain. The forest that stretched out around them felt threatening, the dark trees towering above them. Dag felt as if war boys were lurking behind every tree, ready to do unspeakable things to them, and her heart was in her throat. 

“I don't want to stay here,” she said. 

Max didn't reply. He'd taken out a map and was studying it in the rapidly fading daylight. 

“Do you know where we are?” she asked.

“Think so.”

“Where?”

He pointed on the map. 

“Where's home?”

He pointed at another place, then said:

“It's not home anymore. You gotta stop thinking that.”

“No, I don't want to.”

He didn't say anything. 

Dag stared off into the forest and thought of the woods back home, where she'd felt at home and hadn't been scared like she was now. The paralyzing guilt that had been with her since the hut washed over her again. Maybe the gods would have kept them all safe, if only she hadn't been so selfish. They were her family and she had forgotten them. 

Toast on the frozen ground with that man between her legs, Dag could see it in her mind's eye, kept seeing it even though she didn't want to. 

“It's all my fault,” she said, because it had to come out. 

“What?”

“I think it's my fault.” She looked at Max. “My family...” She felt herself grimace as if she was about to start crying, but no tears came, it was too horrible for tears. “At the winter solstice, I prayed to the gods and ancestors that you'd be with me always, but I didn't pray for my family. And now they're dead.”

He stared at her. She started crying after all. She felt as if she couldn't breathe.

“No, no, no...” He moved over to her. “No, Dag...”

He put his hands on the sides of her face. 

“It doesn't work like that,” he said.

She couldn't look at him. 

“I'm so sorry...” she said. The tears felt burning hot. 

“You're not responsible for a war clan marching on the north,” he said. “It's not your fault, what happened to your family.”

He stroked the side of her face and her hair. He pulled her to him, held her against him, and she put her arms around him. She cried so hard her whole body shook. 

After a while her tears ran dry. Max wiped the tears from her cheek with his fingers and she pulled her own hands over her face too. He was looking at her. The way he said it, that her prayer would somehow have controlled an entire clan, made it seem so obvious that it couldn't have. She felt dry inside. 

“It's because you're alive,” he said, “you feel guilty.” 

She met his gaze, his green eyes that she thought were so pretty. She thought maybe he knew, having lost his own family.

**

People. Maybe a dozen? Two dozen? Dag could count alright, but it was hard to see from here and her heart was beating fast, tick tick tick like a clock, in her chest. Slowly she backed away from the edge of the cliff. 

The horses were grazing from the yellow grass that stuck out of the remaining snow. Max was with his back to her, peeing. They'd stopped to let the horses rest and she'd gone to see if she could find something edible. There were some roots that you could eat, they tasted bad, but they filled your stomach. 

“Max,” she whispered. “There's people down there.”

“Where?”

“Below the cliff.”

He was quick about closing his pants again and went with her through the woods. They lay down on the cold, hard ground and crawled up to the edge where they could peek down. Dag almost didn't dare to breathe, she was so worried that they'd be seen. The people down there outnumbered the two of them and she knew what that meant, what could happen. She'd never forget. 

Max was quiet, watching, and Dag noticed things she hadn't before. There were women and children down there. She saw a few small tents and some makeshift wind shelters, a couple of fires, and some clothes hung on a rope tied between two trees. She looked hard at the people she could see, but couldn't tell if it was anyone she knew, anyone from home. 

Max motioned for her to back away. They didn't speak until they were back with the horses.

“That's not war boys down there, is it?” Dag said and it felt as if it poured out of her, because she had been waiting to say it. 

“Hm.”

“Maybe we should go down there?”

Max shook his head. 

“We keep heading east,” he said. 

“Why?” 

He didn't reply. 

“But there's people here,” she said. 

“Refugees.” He looked at her. “And we don't know them. They might kill us at sight to take the horses and whatever else we have.”

“We don't know that we don't know them. It was too far away to see.”

Max didn't say anything for a few seconds. 

“The chance that your sister is there is so small...” he began.

“I don't care! You don't get to decide.” 

She glared at him. She had to find out. And even if Capable wasn't there, maybe there was someone who had seen her. And the people down there were refugees, he had said it himself, just like they were. They could be nice people.

Max sighed. “It's safer to go east, to a town...”

“Maybe there aren't even any towns out east.”

“There are.”

“Maybe war boys have taken them too.”

“There are towns on the east coast that had an alliance with a war clan, they could be protected.”

“I wanna go down to that camp.”

She crossed her arms across her chest and stared at Max. He stared back. 

“No,” he said then. 

“Fine. You go east then, I'll go down there.”

She took One's reigns.

“That's my horse,” Max said. 

Dag felt like sticking her tongue out at him, but she didn't because it was childish and she was angrier than that too. She let go of the reigns and started taking things from the saddle bags. They were her things, at least some of them. 

“Stop,” Max said after a moment and grabbed her arm.

“Let go of me!” She pulled her arm free and glowered at him. He looked back at her, frowning, which gave him vertical lines between his eyebrows. 

“Alright,” he said then. “We'll go down there, but you do exactly as I say, and you don't say anything.”

“Why?”

He made a frustrated face. “I'm trying to keep you alive. Why... why can't you see that?”

She met his gaze. A vague feeling of guilt crept over her. He looked really tired. Maybe hurt too, it was difficult to tell. 

She nodded a little. “I'll do as you say,” she said. 

They continued a short way ahead before they headed downhill, so that they came from the east towards the camp, and they rode in guns drawn. Max had his rifle across the saddle in front of him and he'd given Dag his spare gun. She couldn't shoot, but hopefully no one had to find out about that. 

He aimed the rifle at the first person they ran into, a young man that, by the look of it, had been in the bushes to relieve himself. The camp was right there in front of them, it looked even more raggedy this close, and people had seen them. People came walking towards them, no one on horseback though, and Dag pointed the gun at those approaching on her side, like Max had told her to do. 

“State your alliance,” Max said to the young man next to his horse.

“This is the North Star Clan.” 

“There's no such clan.”

Dag hoped it didn't show how her hand holding the gun was trembling ever so slightly. She could feel everybody's eyes on her. She didn't see any familiar faces. She saw guns, holstered on hips, and she wondered if Max saw them.

“No, no, there is!” the man said. “This is it!”

“State your alliance,” Max said again. “Or I'll shoot.”

He didn't sound like himself, although Dag couldn't say exactly why, except for the words themselves.

“Max? Max Rockatansky?” 

An old lady broke off from the crowd and headed towards them. She had wild, gray hair and, just like Dag, she was dressed in men's clothes. 

Dag glanced at Max. He turned his gaze to the woman, but he didn't lower his rifle, it was still trained on the man standing next to his horse. 

The woman stopped a short way away from them. 

“Our alliances are with the Vuvalini,” she said, “and with the unaffiliated northerners, who have had their land invaded and their homes stolen from them.”

Did Max know her? Dag was still aiming the gun at the crowd and now she wasn't sure what to do.

“Lower your weapon, Max,” the woman said. 

Finally, slowly, Max pointed the rifle down towards the ground. The young man he'd held at gunpoint ran towards the other people. Dag lowered her gun too. She felt as if she'd been holding her breath, was still holding it, even though she knew she wasn't. 

The woman turned towards the people standing there.

“I vouch for this man,” she said, her voice loud and clear, then she turned back to the two of them.

After a moment Max dismounted and Dag did the same, feeling as if she was somehow playing a strange version of Simon Says. 

“You remember me?” the woman said to Max.

He nodded. 

“I just vouched for you,” the woman said, “you better not still be off your rocker.”

Max just grunted in reply. Not really, Dag thought, doing much to prove he wasn't off his rocker. She wondered what the woman meant by that, though. The woman turned her gaze to Dag then. Her pale green eyes felt sharp. 

“Who is this?” she said.

“My wife,” Max replied when Dag didn't say anything. 

The woman raised her eyebrows a little. “Didn't expect you to remarry,” she said. “Didn't expect you to be alive either, to be honest.”

She looked at Dag again. “You got a name?”

“Dag.”

She nodded a little. “I'm Daisy.” She looked at Max again. “Where did you come from?”

“West. Fat Nancy.”

That was the not-so-flattering name of the town where Dag had lived her entire life. It was the name of the big mountain that loomed behind the town, and it had become the name of the town itself. 

“It was attacked, little over a month ago,” Max said. “Not sure which clan, though.”

Daisy made a face. “Most likely Citadel boys, they're running around all over. They've made a pact with the People Eaters. So, they're up here as well.”

“And the Vuvalini?” Max asked.

“What's left of us, and you're pretty much looking at it, has lived up here since the last war. We were driven off our land, we couldn't fight back, there were too few of us.”

Dag could smell something cooking, like meat roasting on a fire, and she felt her stomach clench. 

“You're welcome to stay,” Daisy said then. “Share our fires. Just pick a spot, anywhere you fancy.”

“Is there anyone here named Capable?” Dag asked. “Or Nux?”

Daisy shook her head. “No. Sorry.”

Dag couldn't keep disappointment from landing like a rock in her empty belly. She knew Capable couldn't be here, because it seemed like the entire camp had stared at them when they arrived, and Capable would have come running to her.

They led the horses between the trees and wind shelters to a spot at the edge of the campsite. It was a good spot, clear escape routes. They took care of the horses then sat down and shared what they had left of the rabbit they'd caught yesterday. Max had taught her how to make a simple snare trap and where to put it, how to look for the rabbit trails. 

They could see tents and wind shelters from here, people sitting around the fires, but they weren't close enough to hear what anyone was saying. 

“How do you know Daisy?” Dag asked him.

He drank some water, washing down the dry, chewy meat. 

“She was a member of Jessie's clan,” he said then. 

Dag drank some water too.

“That was your wife's name?” she said then.

“Mm.”

One by one the fires burned down, until they were just faintly glowing embers in the dark. It seemed they didn't keep the fires burning through the night, probably didn't want to risk being seen. It wasn't as cold here as up in the mountains, but it wasn't summer yet and Dag pulled the bear rug up to her chin when she lay down.

She could just barely see Max. It was quiet, almost as quiet as when they had been alone in the forest. She could see that he was looking at her and then he took her hand and put it on the side of his face. His beard was coarse, but not as scratchy as when it was shorter. He rubbed her hand against his cheek, then up over his forehead, down over his nose, his jaw. Feeling him like that, against her palm and fingers, made her feel as if something was melting inside. 

When he let go of her hand she kept it there on his cheek. She wanted him to do the same to her and was just about to say so when he put his hand on her face and touched her in return. It felt so good. It was almost as if she had forgotten that he was her husband, but now she was remembering it again. 

She also remembered being little and a woman who had to have been her mother, although in the memory she was all but faceless, rubbing her nose against hers. And she remembered being lookout for Capable when she was meeting Nux behind one of the buildings in town or in the woods by their house, and seeing them touch each other's faces like this. 

Eventually she snuggled close, careful not to kick him in the nuts, and he put his arm around her. It was warmer like that. She wondered if they'd ever sleep in a bed, in a house again. She wondered if they could build a wind shelter of their own. And she wondered if Capable might come here, if she had made it.


	8. Chapter 8

Dag asked everyone in the camp, even those who were unfriendly and didn't want to talk to her, if they had seen or heard of anyone called Capable or Nux. No one had. It didn't mean they hadn't made it, she told herself. Someone from home must have made it, she and Max couldn't be the only survivors. 

Apart from rocks placed around the fires and two latrine pits, one for women and one for men, in the woods nearby, there wasn't much in the camp except for sleeping places. Food was scarce. Seeing people and hearing voices felt strange, after the long stretch of time she'd spent alone with Max. 

“I'm going out to hunt,” he said. “Can you stick close to Daisy?”

“I'll be fine.”

“Please, stick close to Daisy.”

She nodded. She could do that. 

“Will you be gone long?” she asked.

“No. I'll be back before nightfall. Then head out again tomorrow if I don't bring down anything.”

He didn't want to leave her alone here, with strangers. She did as he had asked; as soon as he had left she followed Daisy like a shadow, or at least kept her in sight. 

“Max tell you to follow me around?” Daisy eventually asked. 

“Um... yeah.”

“You do everything he tells you to?” 

Dag thought for a moment. She thought of how she'd run back home, again and again, after they had just gotten married. She realized now she may have hurt his feelings. And she also realized that she had thought she missed her family then, but it was nothing compared to now. They'd been just there, and she'd known they were there even when she wasn't. Now they were nowhere. 

“No,” she said. 

Daisy was using a knife to cut the small branches of a larger branch, probably for another wind shelter. 

“He wants you to be safe, I get that,” she said. She glanced at Dag. “No kids?”

Dag shook her head. 

“It's difficult up here in the north,” Daisy said, cutting off another branch. “Are you just gonna stand there, or are you gonna help me?”

Dag sat down on the trunk of the fallen tree where Daisy was sitting. 

“Need to borrow a knife?” Daisy asked.

“I have one.”

Dag took a branch from the pile on the ground and began cutting off twigs.

“Do you have a family?” she asked.

“Had one. Now I have my clan, what's left of it, and what we're trying to build here.”

“You're going to build here?”

There was nothing but forest, you couldn't grow anything here, unless there were meadows nearby that you could turn into farmland.

“Not houses,” Daisy said. “People. We're building with people first.”

“How?”

Daisy looked at her. “We're starting a new clan,” she said.

“You can do that?”

“Why not?”

Max came back just after nightfall and he had shot a deer. It wasn't a very big one, but it sure was a lot bigger than a rabbit. 

“There's another camp, about two hours southwest of here,” he said to Daisy. “Smaller than this one, looks like more refugees.”

“Did you talk to them?”

He shook his head. 

People were a lot more interested than they had been, now that there was deer meat to be had. 

“We have to share it,” Dag said quietly to him, as he was cutting it up. She could feel people's gazes. 

“No we don't,” he said. 

“But there are children here.”

He didn't reply, but they did share. Dag was full when they lay down to sleep that evening. Her stomach felt strange with so much food in it. She took Max's hand under the bear rug. 

**

Max was lookout when Dag got undressed by the small creek that wound its way through the forest a short distance from the camp. It was mountain water and it was icy cold, but she washed as thoroughly as she could anyway. 

A sound made her look over her shoulder.

“Is someone coming?” she asked.

“No one's coming.”

When she was done she pulled on the dresses they'd found in the hut, first the linen one and then the wool one. She had thought they might be a bit short, but they weren't. The woman who had lived there had been as tall as she was. 

“I'll wash these,” she said and picked up the clothes she had been wearing before. “And then you can wear them, and I'll wash the ones you're wearing now.”

Max nodded. 

The people from the other camp that Max had seen showed up after a couple of days. Dag asked all of them if they'd seen or heard about anyone called Capable and Nux, but they hadn't. 

Dag learned people's names, the names of their children. 

“We should keep going,” Max said after a few more days.

Dag looked up from what she was doing. 

“What?”

“The horses are rested, we are rested, traveling will be easiest during the summer. Faster too.”

“No.”

He came and sat down next to her. “I'm sorry Capable wasn't here,” he said. “But we need to keep heading east.”

“No, I don't want to go.”

“This isn't safe.”

Dag looked around, people sitting around the fires, some lying in their wind shelters.

“But they are building a new clan,” she said. “A proper war clan.”

“They aren't one now.” 

“But these are nice people, we were heading east to find nice people.”

Max shook his head a little. “Listen, there isn't enough food around here to feed these people, especially not if more show up. Come winter we'd starve.” 

The thought of heading out there again, even though they were technically outdoors now too, and go to yet another unfamiliar place, it made a bleak feeling spread inside her. And she couldn't stop thinking about Capable; she didn't want to go any further away. 

“But we can help,” she said. “You can hunt and we can grow things, we just need to find some good soil...”

“Dag, it isn't safe. Right now, no one knows we're here, but when the Citadel Clan gets wind of it, they'll attack.”

“Daisy said that we'll fight back, they're training...”

“I don't want to.”

She looked at him. 

“If we stay,” he said, “when they war boys show up... I'll have to fight, that's what you're asking of me, and I don't want to.”

He met her gaze for a moment, then looked down. She didn't know what to say. She didn't want to leave. What if Capable came here and she was gone? And she didn't want to be alone with him for days, and weeks, and months. She'd forget he was her husband again. 

“Okay,” she said, feeling hollow as she said it. “We'll go.”

She had trouble sleeping that night. She was scared of leaving, and scared of staying. She worried about Max too. 

She was looking at him when he woke up. 

“We can go back to the hut,” she said. 

He looked at her a moment. 

“You wanna go back there?” he said. 

She didn't, not really, but it wasn't as far away as the east coast. 

“We could live there,” she said. “And maybe the war will end, and we can come back.”

Or she might end up going up the mountain one day, if he died before her. 

“Someone lived there, there has to be a plot where we can grow things, enough for us,” she said. 

He was quiet for a while. “Alright,” he said then.

She hadn't known for sure that he would say yes, but she thought that he might. He wasn't interested in being around people. It made her wonder a little bit about why he had agreed to marry her. She was a person and he was around her a lot. 

After they had eaten a little they prepared for leaving. It didn't take very long. Valkyrie, another of the few survivors of the Vuvalini Clan, came up to them.

“You're leaving?” she asked.

Max nodded. 

“You need to get to higher ground,” he said then. “You can't defend this place.”

“I know. We're going to.”

Valkyrie looked at them both. “You take care of each other,” she said. “Hope to see you again, one day.”

They went to find Daisy, to say goodbye. 

“You're running,” she said. 

Max didn't look pleased to hear that. “I've had enough of war,” he said. 

“Haven't we all?”

“If you see my sister,” Dag said, “can you tell her where we went? She has red hair, she's a little shorter than I am.”

Daisy nodded. “I'll keep my eyes open,” she said. 

The young man who Max had pointed his rifle at when they arrived here came riding from between the trees, straight at them. Dag jumped out of the way to not get trampled, but he reigned in his horse just before he rode them down.

“War boys, a few hours west of here,” he said, panting almost as hard as the horse. 

“How many hours?” Daisy said. “Exactly what direction are they in?”

Dag listened as he told them, a cold, cold feeling spreading inside. She looked at Max and he looked back at her. 

“Seems we're all running,” Daisy said.

“Aren't you going to fight them?” Dag asked.

“We're far from ready for that.”

She walked off. 

Dag took Max's hand and he looked down at it for a moment. 

“I want to go with them,” she said when he raised his gaze to her face. “Maybe we'll go to a safer place, and if not, we continue to the hut.”

She felt his palm against hers, his fingers wrapped neither tightly nor loosely around her hand, but close all the same. 

“Please?” she said. 

He nodded a little. 

**

Dag looked at the flattened undergrowth.

“They'll know we were here,” she said.

Max nodded a little.

“We'll just have to hide where we went,” he said. 

He was staring at the ground, like she had done moments before. He seemed lost in thought. 

“Won't they be able to track us?” she asked. She thought about how he could tell where a deer or a fox had walked, when she couldn't see much at all. 

He turned his head and looked at her. “Maybe.”

She didn't like the sound of that. 

“It'll be dark before they get here, though,” Max said. “And they're not looking for us, judging by what that snothead said.”

Dag assumed he meant the young man who had seen the war boys. 

They didn't have time to go very far. The sun seemed to traverse the sky at a much faster pace than usual. They went up the narrow path that Dag and Max had come down not long ago, the trail of people and animals moving slowly. Those who went last, Max was among them, covered their tracks. 

We would have been long gone if we'd left just the two of us, Dag thought. 

Come nightfall people were huddled one level up from their previous campsite. Dag could barely see them, just dark shapes among the trees. There would be no fires tonight. At the edge of the cliff, overlooking the glade below, Max and others were lying flat on their bellies, rifles in hand. Dag didn't have a rifle, but she lay down next to him anyway. She was worried she might get separated from him in the dark otherwise, if they had to run. The sky was overcast, had been all day, and in a few minutes it would be pitch black. 

She thought about how to get to the horses, walked the distance in her mind. The horses were tied a little further back. Max had told her to memorize the route, so that they would be able to get to them quickly. 

There was nothing to do but wait. Her stomach felt hard as a knot, as if she had swallowed a rope that had wound itself round and round in there, pulling tight. She could smell earth and pine. A rock or a root was digging into her thigh, but she didn't dare to move. 

Glancing to the side she could just make out Max, staring down the length of the rifle. He'd told her he didn't want to fight. If he had to tonight it would be her fault. She felt guilty, thinking that. 

Her own breaths sounded so loud in her ears, as if they were echoing through the forest. 

Then she saw it, an orange light moving in among the trees down there. It seemed far away, but after she had stared at it for a moment she saw that it was getting closer. And there was another light. 

They had torches, as soon as they cleared the densest forest she saw that, and they were so many! A long line of riders. In the firelight their coats looked black and their faces hard. She pressed her chin against the ground, trying not to breathe so loudly, but she couldn't close her eyes. 

Were these the men who had murdered her family? Who had so brutally forced Toast, and maybe her other sisters too? She had no way of knowing, but it could have been them. They looked frightening, their eyes hidden in shadows like beasts from another world. 

They were looking at the ground, not all of them, but some. Her heart was beating so fast in her chest. Don't look up, she thought, even though the light from the torches didn't reach this high up and she and the others were cloaked by the dark of night. 

She could hear voices, but not what they were saying. Ride on, she thought, please let them ride on and not come up here. 

It seemed to take a long time, the trail of people endless, but eventually the last in the line had passed. The lights from their torches were receding, getting swallowed by the forest. It got quiet and dark. Dag didn't move and they waited, but nothing happened. Eventually she felt Max's hand on her arm, pulling at her to make her back up. 

“Seems we got lucky.” That was Daisy's whispering voice. 

“They noticed the size of the campsite,” Max replied. “They'll come looking, sooner or later.”

It was still a long time until morning. Dag and Max made their way back to where they had left their things, moving slowly and carefully in the darkness. Dag had to use her hands, rather than her eyes, but then she felt the pelt of the bear rugs against her fingers, right beneath the pine tree where they'd put it, and she spread one out on the ground to lie on. 

Sleep didn't seem possible. Even though she was bone deep tired, she was also blindingly awake as if a bright light was on in her head. She felt Max's hands on her. She was wearing his clothes again and he unlaced her pants. He wanted to do it now? Here? He pulled them down and rolled on top of her. It was dark and they were under the rug, but there were people here, not far away at all. It didn't feel good, when he pushed inside her. 

She was afraid someone might see, despite the blackness of night. And she thought of Toast. She didn't want to but the image was there in her head. The war boy pushing himself at Toast, again and again. Dag didn't know what it was like, being forced, but the thought made her sick. It was all she could think of. 

It didn't feel like it was supposed to, Max moving inside her. She didn't want him doing it, even though he was her husband.

“No,” she said. “Please stop.”

He did. He pulled out, even though he wasn't finished. He'd never done that before, but then she had never asked him to. 

“Did I hurt you?” His breath ghosted across her face when he spoke. 

She shook her head, before realizing he could hardly see her, but maybe he felt it. He moved off her. She pulled her pants up again and Max straightened his own clothes next to her. 

She couldn't explain why it felt so wrong. She wanted it to feel nice, like it used to, like it had back home.

“Are you angry?” she asked after a few seconds.

“No.”

In a way it was a relief that it was too dark to see, but at the same time she wished she could have seen his expression and get a clue of what he was thinking. 

She didn't know what to say now. She felt sad, somehow, and guilty. 

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“Does what hurt?”

“When it's hard like that?”

“No.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “Did someone tell you that?” he asked then.

“No, I just thought it might.”

She thought of the war boys, riding through the woods below. She was scared. She didn't want to be here, she wanted to be back in their cabin. She wanted everything to be the way it was. She didn't feel like herself and she was afraid she never would again.

“Sure I didn't hurt you?” he said. 

“Yeah.” 

It got quiet, except for the faint, nightly sounds of the forest. Dag could feel tears burning in her eyes, but they didn't fall. 

“It just... it didn't feel the same,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

She felt his hand on her head, stroking her hair. She turned onto her side so that she faced him and reached out, found his shoulder and followed it until she felt the warm skin of his neck against her fingers, then his face. He put his hand on her cheek and she closed her eyes. His fingers were warm, calloused but gentle. 

“Can I hold you?” he asked after a moment. 

“Yeah.” She moved closer and he put his arms around her. She buried her face against his chest, felt the warmth of him.


End file.
